


take on me

by bottomlinsons



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Discussion of Abortion, First Meetings, Gun Violence, M/M, Meet-Cute, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Relationship, meet-ugly actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 15:03:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19231525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bottomlinsons/pseuds/bottomlinsons
Summary: Louis is an assassin. Normally, he's a very good assassin. This hasn't happened to him before.(au prompt: "I'm an assassin and I've been set to kill you but oh my god you are so fucking pale, are you alright?")





	take on me

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to erin for the prompt!

▾

“Jesus. Come on, okay.”

Louis hauls the man up, his grip tight under the man’s armpits. The dead weight isn’t the problem; Liam makes sure Louis can lift a lot more than this in the gym every day. No, the problem is the man, still semi-conscious, who won’t — stop — moving. As Louis tugs him up the stairs, the man’s legs flail about, kicking at Louis’ ankles in a way that could be almost purposeful if the man were a little more awake. His arms, long and skewed at an odd angle under Louis’ hold, bump into the walls of the narrow stairwell. His head is lolled backward, balancing precariously on Louis’ left shoulder, as he struggles to walk them both to the man’s flat.

“You’ve got it,” he says. “Not much further.”

The man’s head rolls with as much purpose as Louis thinks he’s capable. His hot breath spills across Louis’ collarbones. “What’re you doin?”

Louis adjusts his hold and attempts the next step. “Shut up,” he says. “We’ve got to get you upstairs.”

The man doesn’t shut up. “Who’re you? S’happening?”

This is.

Hard to explain.

“T’hurts,” the man slurs wetly into Louis’ neck.

“I know, I know.” Louis manages another step, then has to fix his grip again. He leans against the wall to make it happen, holding the man’s right arm up so that he can duck underneath it. Holding the man tightly around the waist works a little better. “We’ll fix it, come on.”

The man stays quiet as Louis makes it up the rest of the stairs. Or, well, he doesn’t talk. He mumbles a lot and groans a little, but it’s all indistinguishable. It’s probably got something to do with the bullet that Louis shot into his side forty minutes ago, so Louis doesn’t hold it against him.

He does slump in relief when they get to the man’s front door. He knows the address from the early weeks of his recon, but he doesn’t know much more than that. The bulk of his research had been focused on the protest site, searching out and deciding on the best position on the rooftops and surrounding buildings. He props the man up against the wall, holding him with his shoulder while he searches for the door key in the man’s pockets. He finds it in a few seconds, then has to hold the man up again to get him inside.

He makes it to the man’s couch with a single-minded focus. He’s starting to lose his breath, and his shoulders are aching so much they might as well be on fire. It’s a small couch, but it’s got attitude. If you can say things like that about a couch. This one is bright blue, made of velvet, with golden trimmings, so Louis thinks he can.

He drops the man down onto it, then makes sure he’s lying out correctly. His next few seconds he spends in the bathroom, gathering supplies. On his way back, he snags a chair from a nearby corner and sets it up next to the couch.

Then he gets to work.

▾

When Harry wakes up, it’s just barely. It’s dark outside, but he can’t remember when it got that way. That’s when the nausea settles in, which wakes the rest of him up very quickly.

He jumps up, bile rising in his throat that he needs to expel. The last thing he expects is a solid hand on his shoulder, and a bucket pressed under his chin. It stays there as he vomits, fingertips pressing gently into the flesh of his back, grounding him. When it’s over, the pressure changes and he’s pushed back against the couch.

“You should rest,” the owner of the hands says.

Harry has to stare quite a long time at the man. Harry tracks the shape of his face, thinking about his blue eyes and the sharpness of his cheekbones, his jaw.

Nope. He definitely doesn’t recognise this bloke.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Oh, Christ. His throat is torn to bits.

“That doesn’t matter,” the man says. “Come on, lean back a little.”

The man gets up close, reaching around Harry’s head to adjust the pillows that support his neck. Harry fights it at first, but his body hurts, all over, actually, and he can’t get his thoughts to line up. When did they get back to his apartment? Why did he bring this person with him? All of these questions lead back to his first.

He asks again as he puts his head on the cushion. “Who are you?”

The man hushes him again, pulling away to reach for something on the coffee table. He turns back with one of Harry’s favourite mugs in his hand. “That’s not important,” the man says, “Here, I made you some hot chocolate.”

Harry blinks at him. Weary, and coherent enough to understand he’s not likely to get an answer to his question, he lifts an arm to take the mug.

He doesn’t get there. When his arm is half raised, it tugs on a muscle in his abdomen, and his entire middle seems to catch alight. He hisses, wincing and curling in on himself.

The man sets the hot chocolate down, so hasty that the liquid spills over the side. “Careful! Fuck.”

He leans forward again, hands fluttering at Harry’s shoulders, then his elbows, then his wrists. His grip, when he takes Harry’s hands and pulls them carefully away from Harry’s middle, is gentle.

Harry stares down at his stomach, heart thundering in his ears. White bandages are wrapped around his waist, starting at his hips and climbing halfway up his ribs. In the middle of it all is the source of his pain, a couple of inches to the left of his belly button and maybe two inches lower. He doesn’t — he can’t remember — but surely he’d remember — what the fuck happened to him?

As Harry fights not to hyperventilate, the man moves Harry’s arms around and back to his sides. He’s not forceful, and Harry doesn’t put up any fight, too distracted to even really notice.

“What the — ?” Shit. His lungs feel too small for the air in them, straining at his chest. “What the hell is this.”

The man doesn’t look at him. Apparently happy that Harry’s arms are back in the right spot, he moves to resettle the blankets that are draped over Harry’s lap. “They’re bandages.”

Harry clenches his teeth, feeling the strain in the muscles of his jaw. “Why am I wearing bandages?”

That earns him a look, although it is only a flicker. “You don’t remember?”

Yelling right now isn’t going to help, Harry knows, but it’s still awfully tempting. He takes a deep breath, instead. “Do you suppose I’d be asking as many questions if I did?”

The man bites his bottom lip, and his hands pause on the blankets. Then he huffs a little, the echo of a laugh. “That’s a good point.”

Harry yanks the blankets out of hands. It doesn’t startle the man, but he does go still. There’s something about it that sends a shiver up Harry’s spine. He doesn’t back down though. He can’t.

“What’s going on?”

Harry jumps when the man stands abruptly. His gaze flicks from the blankets on Harry’s lap to Harry’s face, then quickly to the hot chocolate that’s spilt on Harry’s coffee table. He wipes his hands on his pants - dark jeans, Harry catalogues, with a black t-shirt - then hurries past the couch towards Harry’s kitchen.

“Hey!” Harry can’t twist around, not when his stomach is screaming at him like this, so he cranes his neck as far as he can. “I’m talking to you!”

“Why don’t we start with what you do remember.”

Harry scowls. “Or you could just tell me.”

The man is at Harry’s kitchen sink, at least as far as Harry can see. He fusses with the taps, runs the water for a few seconds, and then turns back to face Harry. When he steps into a clearer view, Harry notices a cloth in his hand.

When he comes back over, it’s to wipe at the mess on the coffee table. “It’s,” he starts, then stops, huffing a breath out his nose. “It’s hard to explain.”

Harry is losing patience. “Great. I don’t give a shit.”

Finished with the table, the man straightens again. He reaches up with the hand that’s not holding the cloth and scratches at the back of his neck.

“Okay,” he clears his throat. “Well. I, uh. I shot you.”

For a second there is silence. Harry’s heart climbs up his throat. He thinks, just for a moment, he might choke on it.

Hoarse, he says, “You shot me?”

The man rocks on his heels, holding his hands behind his back. He looks at the wall behind Harry’s head, then the ceiling, then Harry again. “Yep.”

Panic pushes Harry into motion. He scrambles on the couch, ignoring the searing pain at his side, grasping at the armrest to try and get an angle and push himself up. It doesn’t work, his legs tangle quickly in the blankets on his lap, and fuck, he’s stuck. Realising that he can’t get up, that he’s stuck, freezes all the air in the room and suddenly he’s gasping.

The man rushes forward. “Oh shit, stop, you’ll rip your stitches.”

Harry pushes himself back into the couch, unable to run, but still instinctively searching for a way to get away. He knows his panic is written all over his face; he can read it in the pity he sees in the man’s face. “My stitches?”

The man nods, measured. “Yeah.”

Harry swallows, thick. “When did I get stitches?”

He feels weary, cornered. By some miracle, the man seems to recognise that and doesn’t step any closer. He backs away instead, then slowly lowers himself into the one-seater couch opposite Harry. “About half an hour ago.”

Harry doesn’t know what’s happened to him over the past few hours, but he does know that not enough time has passed for him to be shot, go to the hospital, get stitches and come home. He can connect the dots from there. “You?”

“Me,” the man shoots him a grin. “You’re lucky, too. It’s my specialty.”

Harry needs to think. It’s hard.

“Stitches,” he says, slow, “are your specialty?”

“Is this a thing for you?” The man breathes a laugh, somehow soft and terrifying all at the same time. “Just repeating things other people say?”

Harry’s not in the mood to be laughed at right now. “You fucking shot me!”

The man’s face clears of mirth. “I did.” He nods, not quite sombre but getting there. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

“There you go again,” the man says. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

This is. It’s too much. Harry’s stomach hurts, and it’s radiating through the rest of his body. That alone would be enough to exhaust him; this onslaught of information — absolutely outlandish information, at that — is more than enough to overwhelm him. He’s tired, his eyelids droop with it, but he’s also too wired to even think about going to sleep.

This man shot him. He was shot today.

“I don’t understand,” he breathes.

The man does a funny thing with his face, like he’s trying to smile but hasn’t quite made it. The end result is a grimace and a sad one at that.

“Right. Yeah. Haven’t helped much with that, have I?”

An understatement if Harry’s ever heard one. He can feel tears — the stress, the panic, the fear — welling at the back of his eyes. He bites down on his lip, staring at the man until he finally works up enough courage to ask the only question that matters.

“Are you going to kill me?”

He watches the man’s sad eyes. A glimmer of hope sparks in him when he sees the man smile if a little hesitantly. “I just spent the last hour fixing you up. You think I want to ruin all my hard work?”

Harry feels his nostrils flare as he takes that in, considers it. “You said you’re the reason I needed fixing.”

The man chews on his lips. “Yeah. I was.”

“Why?” Harry needs to know.

It’s easier to look at the man’s hands than it is to look at his face. He’s winding them together, threading his fingers around each other, clenching and unclenching them into fists. It’s almost as if he’s nervous.

“I’m going to try and explain,” the man says carefully. “I promise. I need to check on your bandages first though. If that’s okay?” He motions to Harry on the couch. “You moved around quite a bit there.”

Harry breathes roughly through his nose. “I don’t think you can hold that against me.”

The man stands slowly as if he wants to be sure that Harry isn’t frightened by his approach. “No,” he agrees.

Harry holds up a hand before he takes another step. “But you will explain?”

The man nods. “I will.”

The movement is jerky when Harry nods his permission. He keeps his pace measured, but comes to Harry’s side again. He reaches out gently to pull at the blankets, and then at Harry’s shoulder, making sure he’s leaning forward enough that he can unwind the bandages. His fingers are slender and delicate, soft with their touch. Harry shivers a little when they scrape at his skin. It’s cool enough that Harry’s nipples have taken notice. He feels himself blush when he notices, but the man is the consummate professional. He focuses only on the bandages, and when he is apparently satisfied, he wraps Harry back up without hesitating.

It’s only as he finishing that he glances up to meet Harry’s gaze. “What’s your name?”

Harry feels his jaw go a little loose. “You don’t know my name?”

“No.”

“But you!” Harry is almost winded by his incredulity. “You shot me!”

The man clips the bandage in place, then leans back to shrug at Harry. “I didn’t need to know your name for that.”

Harry stares at him. “What the fuck.” It’s not a question. It’s just all he’s got.

The man holds his hands up, placating. For a moment, Harry is reminded of how Gemma speaks to her daughter whenever she’s upset about something.

“I’m going to explain, okay,” the man says. “I said I would. In the meantime, it’d be nice to know who I’m talking to.”

Harry snaps his jaw shut while he thinks it over. The man is already in his house, has already sewed Harry’s body together. What else does he have to lose?

“Harry,” he says.

The man nods his head. “Harry,” he repeats. “Good. Thanks. I’m Louis.”

Harry narrows his eyes. “Is that your real name?”

Louis startles at that, which Harry thinks is undeserved. It’s a very rational question, in this context.

“Yeah. It is.”

Harry doesn’t know what else to say, so he leaves it there. He bites lightly at his tongue, physically stopping himself for pressing for more answers. When Louis is done, he leans away from Harry’s couch.

“I don’t think you ripped anything,” he reports. “That’s good.”

Harry stares at him and waits.

Louis gets the message. He seems to brace himself, rubbing his hands together as he organises his thoughts. Then he takes a deep breath. “Okay. Right, so. Do you remember going to the protest?”

It’s dazed, but he does remember the start of the day. He’d been planning for this protest for weeks now, which helped. He’d been calling to his Twitter followers, people who’d read his articles and agreed with his opinions enough to search him out on social media, to join him as well. “Yeah,” Harry says. “For abortion rights?”

He goes to a lot of protests. There’s a lot to be protested in this day and age.

Louis nods. “Yeah, that one. So, I guess someone didn’t want you there? Or was angry that you were there. So they, uh. Paid me to take care of it.”

Harry’s throat is dry. “Take care of it?”

Abashed, Louis scratches at his neck again. “Yeah, like.” He stops, frowning down at his lap before looking back up to Harry. “That’s what I do. I, uh. I like to think of it as problem-solving.”

There’s a chance Harry’s going to throw up. “Problem-solving?”

Louis winces. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

“So you’re an assassin,” Harry concludes. “That’s what you’re saying?”

There is a pause. “Uh,” Louis bites his lip. “Yes.”

Harry lets his head drop back onto the cushion. It twinges at his stomach wound, but the pain passes when he stays nice and still. He doesn’t have time to think about it now. He’s got bigger things on his mind.

Someone tried to have him killed. Someone paid to have him killed.

“Someone tried to assassinate me?” He needs to check, one last time, and make sure he’s got this absolutely clear. “Over abortion rights?”

“Yup.”

Well, he thinks. If he were to die fighting for anything, it might as well be that. He’s never been quiet about his political views, and he always knew that there were people who disagreed with him. His twitter DMs were full of death threats. He’d just — he didn’t think it would come to this.

Finished with shock, anger quickly replaces it. He turns an accusatory glare on Louis. “So what? You’re pro-life then?”

Louis physically recoils at that. “No,” he says, so hasty it startles them both. He shakes his head, violently. “Fuck no, absolutely not. Fuck that. I just, with my — uh, assignments. I try to stay impartial.”

Harry huffs. “Oh, right,” he sneers. “So you don’t give a shit at all, that’s it.”

Louis shakes his head. “No, I do. I just — I didn’t know what the protest was for. Not until I’d — ”

“Shot me?”

“Well. Yeah.”

Harry barks a laugh. He wants to fold his arms across his chest, but he knows he can’t. It makes him feel oddly impotent, unable to do with his body what he wants. “So what, you felt bad?”

“I mean, yeah! Normally the people I… look after, they’re bad fucking people. But you — you were doing the right thing.”

“I was,” Harry says resolutely.

“Yeah,” Louis agrees. “So, after. I wanted to make sure that you were okay, so I brought you back here.”

Harry chuckles, dry and bitter. “Funny way of making that happen, mate.”

Louis sighs. “Look. Harry. I should have done more research beforehand, I’ll admit that. But I’ve checked the wound, it didn’t hit anything vital. A couple of months of bed rest and you’ll be good as new.”

“Oh, well, thank God you were here.” It feels good to be angry, Harry realises. It’s much, much better than being scared. “I don’t know what I would have done if you just hadn’t shot me in the first place.”

Louis’ voice is rising with Harry’s, mimicking Harry’s energy. “If I hadn’t taken the contract, someone else would have.”

“I guess that makes you my hero then, is that right?”

“You could say that, yes.”

“Well, I’m not going to!”

“I’m not asking you to!”

“Good!”

“Good.”

Louis shoves up and away from Harry’s couch, abruptly enough that Harry flinches a little. The anger hasn’t scared all of the fear away then. Louis either doesn’t notice or is gracious enough to ignore it, as he strolls back to Harry’s kitchen again.

“Do you like pasta?” he asks.

Harry has to pause. He blinks a few times. “Do I like pasta?”

Louis hums from the kitchen. His anger, his noisiness, has evaporated completely. “You’re doing the repeating thing again.”

Harry wants to yell. “Yes, I like pasta. What the fuck?”

He cranes his neck again, but this time Louis is in his blind spot. Harry thinks he’s rattling around in the cupboard behind the island if the noise he can hear from the pots and pans banging about is anything to go by.

“I’m gonna cook you some pasta,” Louis says, his voice muffled by whatever cupboard he’s digging through. “My specialty.”

Harry scoffs. “I thought stitching up bullet wounds was your specialty.”

Louis’ head pops up behind the island, suddenly visible. “I can have more than one specialty. Don’t put me in a box.”

There’s a chance, Harry thinks, that this entire evening is a dream. That would certainly make more sense than whatever is happening right now. He stays quiet for a moment, wondering if he’s about to wake up in bed to the sound of his alarm. When it doesn’t happen, he sighs and asks, “Why are you cooking me pasta?”

He watches as Louis bustles through his kitchen, heading towards the stove. That, too, is in Harry’s blindspot. “It’s not as if you’re gonna be up and cooking anytime soon. I’ll set you up with some, so you’ve got something to eat for the next few days. Do you need me to go to the shops for you?”

Harry can’t help himself. Despite the pain, he shuffles on the couch a tiny bit, trying to get Louis back in his eye line. “What? No!”

Louis is peering into his pantry. “Are you sure? You don’t have a lot of food stocked up.”

“Stop judging my pantry!” Harry shouts.

Louis backs hastily away from the pantry, hands raised and palms open like Harry’s aimed a gun at him. Ha. “Alright!” he says. “I’m just trying to help.”

“If you wanted to help you shouldn’t have shot me!”

Louis throws his hands up, exasperated. “I can’t exactly go back in time and unshoot you, can I? Groceries are gonna have to do.”

Harry shakes his head. “I can’t believe this.”

Louis does end up cooking Harry dinner. He cooks enough for seven Tupperware containers, which he fills and stores in the fridge with mercurial focus. Once he’s done, he checks Harry’s bandages again, then finds the television remote and puts it within Harry’s reach. He does the same with Harry’s iPhone, which he’s plugged into a charger at some time while Harry was still sleeping.

“Do you need anything else?” He asks, tucking Harry’s blankets in around his feet. When Harry doesn’t reply, Louis apparently takes his silence as a no. “Alright, well I’ll be back in a couple of days. You can call the police if you want, but if you don’t I’ll come back and sort out some more food for you.”

Harry can’t do anything more than gape. By the time he’s sorted his thoughts out, Louis is long gone.

▾

Harry doesn’t call the police, although he can’t exactly say why, and Louis does return a few days later. He cooks a stir fry for Harry next and brings new bandages to replace the old.

On his next visit, he brings a lasagne, and then a green chicken curry.

Harry has mostly kept his movement to the trips between the couch, the kitchen and the bathroom. Slowly, he gets more courageous. By Louis’ fifth visit, he’s able to stand in the kitchen and help with the cooking. Well, Louis lets him strain the pasta, but Harry thinks that counts.

His work has been wonderful about his absence, happy for Harry to write his articles remotely and send them in. He’s told them he has glandular fever, and they seem to be over the moon that he’s not in the office, threatening to pass it on. Providing them with a medical certificate is a future problem, and can be left until then to process.  

It takes about two months for Harry to be back at one-hundred-percent, and they fly by so fast that Harry barely notices them. When they’re over; when he can stand without assistance and when he takes back control of his kitchen, it feels like everything has been a strange dream.

Everything, including Louis. Louis, as it turns out, has a wicked sense of humour and probably the cutest grin Harry’s ever seen. He’s got sisters, feisty ones, and a fierce protective streak. He’s a good cook, too, even if he’s only got a few meals mastered.

“Well,” Louis says when Harry shows him how to make a chicken stuffed with cheese. He’d been a little confused when Harry had wrapped the chicken with the Parma ham, but he’d come onboard quickly when he’d realise how good it tastes. “Looks like you don’t need me anymore.”

Harry doesn’t want to disagree. At least not out loud.

“You’re going?”

Louis nods.

Harry swallows. “Are you, uh. Coming back?”

Louis swipes a bit of ham, munching on it and looking at Harry with a measured gaze. “Do you want me to?”

Logic fights to be heard at the back of Harry’s brain. This man tried to kill you, it shouts at him. This man literally shot you!

Harry ignores it.

“Yeah. I do.”

▾

**Author's Note:**

> a penny for your thoughts? (not really, I don't have any pennies, but I do promise to shower you with love if you leave a comment/feedback x) 
> 
> fic post is [here](https://bottomlinsons.tumblr.com/post/185619536187)


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